City of Swords (19 page)

Chapter 35

“Thank you,” she told Roux as she slid into the car beside him.

“Not a problem,” he replied. “I always enjoy talking to Beatrice.”

Maybe Annja would ask him later about this Beatrice. “Learn anything?”

“Only that the police are taking this dead serious. They believe you about the liquid nerve gas. The description you gave matched other cylinders recovered from terrorist groups in the Middle East. Interpol is sending agents.”

“He didn’t have a computer.” Annja was talking more to herself than Roux, who pulled away from the warehouse and headed north. “Not upstairs, anyway. Paper, though, lots of it. Old-fashioned.” She was disappointed in the lack of something she could have searched easily and taken with her…
maybe
taken with her. “Did the police say if they found a computer upstairs?” Perhaps they’d already taken it back to their headquarters.

Roux shrugged. “They carried out boxes.”

“Evidence of something.”

“This reliance you have on computers, Annja…” He had to brake as a car turned in front of him, the passenger inside bobbing her head and singing to something playing on the radio.

“They make things easy, that’s all.” She paused. “Do you have one with you? A netbook? An iPad? A—”

He made a tsking sound. “Whatever for?”

“I want to look something up.” She stretched back her good arm, pulling the student paper out and dropping it behind the seat to look at later. Then she dug in her pocket for the prescription bottles. “I should have left them for the police. But they’ve still got an empty one to work with in the trash. I just—”

Roux leaned close, keeping one eye on traffic as he turned into a retail district. Sale signs were plastered across a few of the store windows, garish and bright and meant to attract customers like a fish to a shiny, spinning lure. It was working; shoppers were streaming into the largest place. Left hand on the wheel, he took the bottles from her with his right.

“‘Temozolomide,’” Roux read, then sat straight and gave the traffic his full attention. “What’s the other one?” He turned the bottle so he could read it.

Annja couldn’t make out the dosing information as she tried to read around his fingers.

“They’re both prescribed for Charles Lawton,” he said. “This one is isotretinoin.”

“I want a computer to look them up and—”

“They’re cancer drugs, Annja.”

Roux’s response startled her. “How would you know…”

“I have lost friends through these years,” he said. “Not just to sword fights.”

Or burning at the stake, Annja thought.

“Temozolomide—Temodar—is prescribed to slow the growth of certain cancers. The other, the same thing. Since he has prescriptions for both, I’d say he has a brain tumor.”

“I don’t follow your logic.” Annja pressed her back against the seat. Her first thoughts were of Roux, that he knew about the drugs. He must have been very close to someone taking them to know their names and exactly what they were for. His personal life was largely a mystery to her, and though she loved to find her way through a mystery…this was one she would leave alone.

“It would explain quite a bit,” he said.

“The way he’s acting. The obsession,” Annja suggested. “The driven single-mindedness and—”

“No.” Roux’s expression was sorrowful. The sadness was deeply etched in the lines on his face. “It could explain why he’s moving so quickly. He’s running out of time. But I think the plan was there a long while ago. I don’t think a brain tumor has triggered his plan for a City of God.”

Annja nodded. “All right, I’ll give you that. If he thought he was dying, he would be desperate to build it in whatever time he had left. Charlemagne, after all, died before he could see it happen.”

Roux turned left and pulled over to the curb.

“But why Rouen? Why build his city there and not here in Paris?”

He looked at her. “Because the Christians in Rouen got it wrong, Annja, and in the process of building his City of God, he’s going to show them how to get it right.” Roux paused and pocketed the medicine. “At least, that’s why I think he selected that city. A good place to start, eh?”

She pressed herself even deeper into the seat. Roux was talking about Joan of Arc, the trial that had branded her a heretic and had had her burned at the stake. It was the Church—Christians—who had tried her and killed her. Burned her body three times so there was nothing left to bury. They’d taken it back later, a “do over” as it were, and then named her a saint. But they’d gotten it wrong the first time.

“Lawton is getting it wrong, too,” she said. “Killing Buddhists and—”

“Scientologists.”

She told him about the clippings mentioning upcoming events for Jews, Rastafarians and Wiccans in Rouen.

“Killing everyone who isn’t Christian doesn’t seem very Christian to me.”

“Wars in the name of God haven’t always been…” Roux searched for a word and came up lacking. “In any event, that is why I suspect Rouen.”

“But we’re not going there first.”

He raised an eyebrow.

A pair of teenagers strolled by and tapped on Annja’s side of the car, asking for directions.

“I’ve not been to that restaurant before,” she said. “Sorry.”

They meandered on and stopped someone on the corner, who, judging by his gestures, proved more helpful.

“We’re going to Rouen. Well, I am.” Annja frowned. “Lawton and his…paladins…will be heading there, and that’s probably where they’ll release the nerve gas.”

“Beatrice said the police in Rouen have been put on alert.”

“But I think he’s got another stop or two planned first.”

Roux scratched at a spot behind his ear. His cuts and scabs from the fight in the parking lot last night had all healed. “The Louvre.”

“Yeah, it has to be on his list. He wants Charlemagne’s sword.”

“La Joyeuse.”

“There are others on his shopping list, but from what I’ve gathered, they’re with the crown jewels in the Tower of London.”

“No more formidable than the Louvre.”

“But farther away. He’ll go for Joyeuse first. We didn’t leave him a choice, did we, Roux? The police are swarming his place. He’s got to speed up his timetable.”

“Then why not just—”

“Go to Rouen right away and start cleansing it?” Annja dropped her chin to her chest. “Because he doesn’t have a sword. He wanted mine, said Charlemagne had it first. That it should be his. Archard had Durendal. Luc, Honjo Masamune. A big dwarf was swinging the Wallace Sword at me. There were some other blades out in the parking lot last night that looked like they could have come from a museum.”

“Tizona.”

“It might have been out there, too. It was pretty dark.”

“And there was a lot going on.”

“Controlled chaos,” she said. “I don’t think Lawton bought Tizona for himself. For one of his paladins, certainly, but he’d want something with a Charlemagne angle. Whether because he’s obsessed with his Charlemagne ancestry or the brain tumor is to blame, he’s going after a sword his ancestor used.”

Roux pulled out into traffic and turned north at the next intersection. “To the Louvre, then.”

“You don’t have to go with me,” Annja reminded him.

He stepped on the gas pedal. “One never gets tired of seeing that museum.”

The Louvre had had its share of thefts. In 1998
Sevres Road
by Camille Corot was taken from an exhibit room that didn’t have video surveillance. Police believed a collector of nineteenth-century Impressionist paintings likely hired someone to make off with the $1.3 million work. In 1911 an Italian worker stole the
Mona Lisa,
which helped make the painting one of the most famous in the world. Only a decade ago officials at the Louvre had acknowledged that a pair of eighteenth-century candlesticks had been stolen, worth about $60,000. They’d been reported missing earlier, but the museum had managed to keep the fact quiet for some time. Auditors discovered that the museum had poor records of just how many pieces of art and artifacts it owned, and that it had been plagued by more thefts than it reported. Word had crept out that even a marble statue had been taken from one of the galleries.

So Annja knew that while the museum’s security had improved, it was not infallible, and certainly not what it should be considering the treasures it contained. In its defense, museum staff continued to cite a small budget. Reporters from time to time printed stories about insufficient guards and employees that took coffee breaks stretching into hours.

More than six million people visited the Louvre each year. One of them was going to be Lawton.

Built on the bank of the Seine, the Louvre wasn’t a museum originally. It was first intended as a fortress, then a palace and later as a repository for Henry VI’s works of art. But it was opened to the public as a museum more than two hundred years ago.

Annja had seen Charlemagne’s sword there in passing—twice—but had never stopped to really look at it. She’d been more caught up in the various collections of European paintings and sculptures. On one visit she’d spent hours in the rooms devoted to Roman, Egyptian and Greek art.

She sat quietly now, watching the pedestrians and traffic, as Roux drove. Her thoughts drifted to Rembert and his grandchild, and to her producer, whom she hadn’t contacted for a few days. There was a story here for
Chasing History’s Monsters—
about Charlemagne and his descendant Charles Lawton, the collection of God-touched swords and his plans to build a City of God. But it wasn’t a story she wanted to film.

It was a story she’d been forced to take a starring role in, and she wanted no part of it.

At the end of the street, she could see a section of the Louvre. Traffic was heavy in this area, with many people heading home from work. The museum would be open for only another hour.

The wing along the Seine, where she would find Charlemagne’s sword, was built during the sixteenth century. To get there they would go through the Richelieu wing, which had been added three hundred years later. The most recent addition was the glass pyramid, a controversial project constructed in 1989 by the American architect I. M. Pei. Annja didn’t like it. While the pyramid let sunlight shine down into an underground floor, she felt it incongruous to the old, classic feel of the rest of the place.

“…one of the key figures in European history,” Roux was saying. “King of the Franks, warred against the pagans and Lombards and Saxons, the Moors. Crowned the emperor of the Western Empire, he was more than a figurehead. Law, agriculture, trade…it all flourished under him.”

Annja’s right thumb rubbed across the seat belt as if it were a worry stone. “I don’t need the history lesson, Roux. I know all about Charlemagne.”

Her companion fell silent and found a place to park. They walked the few blocks and paid to get in.

“You’ve only got an hour,” the attendant told them.

“That should be enough,” Roux said.

Enough for what? Annja thought. Lawton and his crew only struck at night. But enough time to see the sword…really look at it…figure out how he might approach the theft.

“Watch me be wrong,” she said.

Roux cocked his head in question.

“Watch my guess be the wrong one. Watch him go after the swords in the Tower of London or after innocent people in Rouen.”

“So you’re changing your mind. Women do that.”

“No, I’m not. I’m just hoping he doesn’t outthink me here and do something else.” Annja glanced at her reflection in the highly polished floor. She looked wretched. Hair mussed, no makeup, left arm in a sling and wearing the borrowed workout clothes of a generous policewoman. She looked like someone who had either just finished a jog or was about to start in on some serious housecleaning. No wonder the attendant stared at her.

She started toward the wing where she remembered seeing the sword a few years ago. “First floor, Richelieu wing. Hope they haven’t moved it. Should’ve asked, I guess.”

“The French police are good,” Roux said. “They have their best people on the nerve-gas hunt.”

“Interpol is good, too,” she admitted. She didn’t have to save the world—or Rouen or Paris, for that matter—all on her own. Annja picked up the pace, the soles of her borrowed shoes squeaking against the floor. They were just a hair too big and her feet slid in them. She felt a couple of blisters coming on, but blisters were nothing next to the aches she couldn’t shake.

She passed people who were clearly weary, their rounded shoulders and slow gait indicators that they’d spent hours here. One tall man rubbed his eyes with one hand and the back of his neck with the other. A solid day of museuming, as Annja called it, was hard work.

The sculptures and Old Masters she passed were a blur of colors, the chatter of the other visitors a buzz that she shoved to the back of her mind. Eyes darting everywhere, she tried to find a familiar face—one of Lawton’s “paladins.” She could have sworn she’d spotted Luc, but a second look showed the black man as tall, but not tall enough. She realized she was huffing and drawing looks from the tourists, so she slowed down, but only a little, never glancing over her shoulder. She knew Roux was there.

Finally, she came to the second room in the Richelieu wing, filled with collections of decorative arts from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century. Relics from Napoleon glittered for her attention.

“There. Joyeuse.”

Annja was struck by the magnificence of the sword.

Chapter 36

A dozen people milled here. One woman, squat-
looking and on the arm of a young man, gave her a passing glance. The rest were men of various ages, enjoying the artistic weapons on display. These weren’t simply old military pieces the Louvre put in cases for the public to see. These were ones that glittered and gleamed, as much works of art as the paintings by Picasso, Michelangelo and Renoir.

Why hadn’t she paid attention to the sword on her previous trips? It truly was a work of art.

“Belle,”
the squat woman said as she admired it. Indeed, Joyeuse was beautiful.
“Magnifique.”

A pair of Italian gentlemen stood as close to the exhibit as they could, so Annja had to wait behind them, peering through the gap between them. “The sword of a king,” one said.

Indeed, Annja thought.

It was displayed tip down in a thick case, probably some type of plastic.

Joyeuse was one of the most famous swords in the world. The traditional coronation sword of France, it had been reproduced by weapons makers everywhere and hung across fireplaces.

“He already has the saber, you know. Charlemagne’s.” Annja kept her voice low. Roux was at her shoulder. “When I was in the hospital—”

“Which time?”

She scowled. “I researched missing swords. Charlemagne’s saber was stolen from the Imperial Treasury in Vienna, the same night—”

“The Hun’s sword was taken.” Roux looked at her. “I can use the internet, too, you know.”

He scanned the dozen people in the display area, none seeming to catch his attention. “This sword is very much a mystery.”

“There’s some debate if it was actually Charlemagne’s,” Annja said. “Some say the proportions are wrong to have come from Charlemagne’s time, and they argue that after twelve hundred years, the original wouldn’t have survived. But the parts…” She trailed off as an announcement came over a hidden speaker, reporting that the museum would be closing soon. A half dozen of the people slowly made their way out.

“Some of the parts are said to come from eight hundred or thereabout,” Annja continued. “Others say pieces are from the early thirteenth century. One antiquarian even thought there was Western craftsmanship involved. Another put it at mid-seventh century. I remember reading an article, back when I was studying sword making, that a sword of this proportion would be no earlier than the eleven hundreds.”

“So, a mystery.” Roux studied the six remaining visitors. “But there is another explanation for the anachronisms, yes?” He asked as if he already knew the answer.

“Yes. Alterations were made to it through the years.”

“Very good.”

Annja wrinkled her nose. She didn’t like it when Roux played the role of teacher. The plaque beneath the exhibit said the sword had been used to crown Philip the Bold in 1270. She stared at the hilt and listened to the Italian men read from a pamphlet.

“‘The hilt was heavily sculpted of gold and had been made in two halves resembling a bulky Oakeshott’…whatever that is. ‘The grip, decorated with fleurs-de-lis and diamonds, was removed for Napoleon’s coronation in 1804. The gold cross bears twin winged dragons with lapis lazuli eyes.’”

The blade glistened in the light of the display case. The scabbard behind it…Annja doubted there was anything left of the original except perhaps bits of gilded silver and the gems. The velvet and gold-embroidered fleurs-de-lis were added in 1824, according to the pamphlet she read over the shoulder of the Italians, for the coronation of Charles X.

Roux was right calling it anachronistic—bits of this year, bits of that decade. But at the sword’s heart, its blade…the blade had been dated to medieval times, the ninth century or earlier. It could certainly have been wielded by Charlemagne. Legend said its pommel contained the tip of the Lance of Longinus, which was said to have Christ’s blood on it.

“Forged from the same stuff as Ogier’s Curtana and Roland’s Durendal,” said a man standing in the doorway between this room and the next exhibit.

“The museum is closing,” a voice over the speaker announced. “Proceed to the exit.”

The man in the doorway was the gaunt German Annja remembered from the warehouse. Ulrich. She thought he’d been in the sword fight in the parking lot, too, but it had been so dark she couldn’t be certain.

“It is good advice.” His voice was clipped. The pair of Italians walked past him, still talking about the sword. “You should be leaving the museum, too.” The other four tourists left. Annja and Roux were alone with him.

Annja reached for her sword, feeling the weight of it in her hand. There were surveillance cameras in this room—she’d spotted them when she entered. Whether they worked was another matter; not all the ones in the Louvre did, though the general public didn’t know that.

Roux started toward him, but Annja put a hand on his sleeve. “He’s mine,” she said.

In that same instant, Ulrich reached into his pocket. He was wearing gloves, and he pulled out a mask and held it to his face.

Annja felt the color drain from her cheeks. She tugged on Roux’s arm. “You’ve got to alert security, help get people out of here.”

“Annja—”

“Don’t argue. Hurry!”

Ulrich stepped to the side as Roux rushed past him, fast for an old man. He hadn’t argued with her, though she’d expected it. Maybe by now he knew what was futile.

“The liquid nerve gas,” Annja said. “He has some here, doesn’t he?” Her heart hammered in her chest. She’d figured he’d be using it in Rouen. But he had enough—eighteen canisters—to use some of it here.

She could see Ulrich smile through the mask, which Annja realized also served as a respirator. His clothes were tight fitting, his shirt a turtleneck with long sleeves, and with the mask, every inch of his skin appeared to be covered. He reached behind his back and drew El Cid’s Tizona.

Annja blinked, her eyes watering. They’d gotten the nerve gas into the air ducts. A rotten way to neutralize the museum’s security. “Damn Lawton.”

“Perhaps.” The word was muffled. Ulrich came forward slowly, arms out and the tip of the sword scraping one of the exhibits. “Perhaps Charles will be damned to hell. But you’ll be dying first, Miss Creed.”

He said something else, but the pounding of her heart drowned him out. Her eyes were watering fiercely, and she found her lungs tightening, the gas seeping inside her. Had Roux gotten out? Warned security? Did he get straggling tourists out, as well?

Nerve gas was among the vicious chemical mixes considered weapons of mass destruction, outlawed by countries throughout the world.

Annja went on the offensive, lunging and batting away his parry. He could fence, though he wasn’t as good as Luc. But he didn’t need to be. All he had to do was keep her here long enough. Annja slashed at his leg, slicing through his pants and drawing blood. He was still safe, she realized; this gas probably had to be inhaled to do harm. And it was doing significant harm to her. Already hobbled with a broken arm, she was going down fast. Her vision was failing, no doubt her pupils contracting… She was salivating profusely, lines of drool spilling over her lower lip and stretching to the polished floor. Annja started shaking.

Minutes left,
she thought, her chest tight, as if caught in a vise, and every breath painful. Roux was going to lose his second charge, after all. And her sword? It wouldn’t be going to Lawton.

She drove the blade forward, catching her opponent’s arm. She felt the blade connect with his bone, he was so skinny, and through the mask, she saw surprise. He hadn’t hoped to best her with his fencing, but he’d thought she’d fall to the gas. And she was falling, but she was going to make sure he fell with her.

He made a feeble attempt to strike her, Tizona glancing off her cast, cutting only the sling that held it close to her body. Hot pain pulsed from the broken arm, but the sensation gave her the impetus she needed. Falling, she shoved the blade up at an odd angle, sliding the steel between his ribs and finding his lungs. Ulrich’s mask filled with blood and he dropped. Annja scrambled over him, releasing her sword and reaching for his mask, shaking uncontrollably and somehow finding the strength to tug it off him. Nausea struck her and she vomited. When it passed, she continued to shake, but was able to press the mask to her face and breathe. She sprawled there, awkwardly strapping the mask around her head with her good arm.
Deep. Breathe deep,
she told herself. Over and over and over.

Annja could hardly see out the mask for the blood, but she couldn’t risk taking it off to clean it. She stayed still another minute, two, the shaking stopping for the most part, but her fingers quivering as if they’d been electrified.

She needed a hospital, a decontamination center… Anyone caught in the museum needed one. Had Roux alerted people? He had to have, she told herself as she struggled to her feet. Unsteady, she leaned against the wall, trying to see through the blood-splattered mask.
Decontamination center, drugs…

She’d been shot, hit by a car, thrown through windows. This was a first for her—being exposed to nerve gas—and not something she ever wanted to experience again. She glanced toward Charlemagne’s sword, in its case. It was safe. Lawton wouldn’t be— She was driven to the floor by a vicious kick to her back.

She heard a muffled voice, but couldn’t make out what was being said. Annja rolled and rolled, putting distance between herself and her new assailant, catching a glimpse of him through gaps in the blood and still not able to make him out. Darkly dressed, every inch of him covered, with a mask similar to the one she was wearing… The sword, though, she recognized: Honjo Masamune.

Annja sprang to her feet, meeting him sideways so her broken arm was away from him. The sword was in her hand. She hadn’t recalled drawing it, but it was there nonetheless, and she knocked away his blow. Luc wasn’t using two swords today, perhaps pressing his luck getting the one in through security, or because he’d needed to bring other things with him, such as his respirator. Whatever the reason, Annja was thankful she had only one weapon to worry about.

He was quick, and he darted around her, his eyes flitting past her to Joyeuse’s case. His leaps and thrusts were perfectly executed, but Annja parried each one. They were designed to wear her down. She was already worn down, as far as she could be and still manage to stay on her feet. Where he stepped lively, she shuffled. Where his posture was perfect, her shoulders were rounded and her back hunched. It was all she could do to keep from throwing up again. A tremor struck her and she gripped her sword tighter, brought it up and knocked Honjo Masamune away once more.

He was saying something, but muffled as it was by his mask and hers, she couldn’t understand. She heard only a pounding in her ears and the rasp of her own breath. If he wanted to wear her down, let him try. She had every confidence that Roux made it out. The police would be here soon, with whatever medical force they could bring with them. She would outlast Luc. She would see him locked away in a Paris prison.

More muffled words, probably curses at her for killing his twin. He wasn’t merely trying to capture her now, as per his orders in the faculty parking lot at the university. He was trying to kill her. His strokes were stronger and more vicious, and she had to work harder to keep his blade at bay. Annja kept looking for an opening, but he wasn’t giving her one. And with her vision impaired because of the mask, matters were grim. She was guessing, and she was moving back, tangling herself in a velvet rope that circled an exhibit, then working herself free. Spinning, she saw him bring Honjo Masamune down on the rope, slicing it like a laser beam would.

Something squawked over the speaker, and she heard sirens. Multiple sirens. Maybe someone outside was using some device to talk through the museum speaker system.

Luc heard it, too, and he moved even faster. There was nothing flashy in his moves; that stuff was for exhibits. A good swordsman worked quickly, with simple actions designed to kill, not entertain. And a good swordsman—or swordswoman—didn’t let a match go on any longer than necessary.

It was just long enough. Annja couldn’t see clearly, and she was still racked with tremors, but she’d been able to detect a rhythm in Luc’s footwork. He was predictable, after all. Another few minutes to make sure she was right…

He landed a blow against her sword arm. She’d turned, but not fast enough, and Tizona sliced through the sweatshirt. One more pain to master…

He drew back and she fell to her knees, jamming her sword up with as much force as she could find. The blade sank into his stomach and she pushed until it was in up to the hilt. He fell on her, struggling for a moment before she was able to crawl out from under him. She released the pommel of her sword and it vanished, leaving him flat on the marble, with blood pooling around his jerking fingers.

She started to leave, then stopped, turned and peered at Joyeuse through her blood-splattered mask. It was safe. Annja returned to Luc’s body and picked up Honjo Masamune, holding it under her arm. She managed to grab Tizona, too. These swords would have to be returned to their rightful owners as well, she thought, as she stumbled out of the room.

She didn’t see a soul in the halls. Annja prayed everyone had managed to make it out, though she suspected some museum staff members must have fallen to the gas. Lawton would have considered them collateral damage.

She should make her way to the bowels of the complex and figure out where the nerve gas was released and how many canisters were used. See if she could find a way to shut it down…if there was any of it left to shut down.

She should…but she lurched toward the exit instead, self-preservation kicking in. She made it out of the pyramid to the sidewalk, taking in the police cars and ambulances, the crowd of people kept back by hastily erected barriers, the news crews that were arriving, before two men in hazmat gear took her by the arms. Which was awkward, considering one of her arms was in a cast…and she was carrying two
swords.